Murtabak

Hungry? How about some tasty Mutton Murtabak at Zam Zam? Yum Yum!

Congratulations to Ben and Qinpei!

I would like to congratulate my cousin Ben and his wife Qinpei on the safe delivery of their baby boy Brandon today! I am very happy for them and that makes me officially an uncle now! Haha! These pictures are especially poignant as they were taken almost exactly a month before the delivery!

Nikon 35mm F2 AFD


Nikon 50mm F1.4 AFD

Nikon 35mm F2 backlit shot

A moderately wide angle lens like the Nikon 35mm F2 is seldom used for portraiture unless its to show a bit of the environment the subject is in, hence we would need to be careful of distractions in the foreground or background. Again its flare resistance proved invaluable in this backlit shot, using nothing but available window light and the natural reflector effect of the white sheets under the subject. Care has to be taken to avoid putting the subject too close to the edge to prevent barrel distortion from showing up on the subject, which can prove unattractive. I took a Manual White Balance reading from the white sheets for this shot, using what I can in that location. Cheers!

A Snapshot with my Nikon 35mm F2

I know a lot of people saying that there is not much nice scenery to take in Singapore, and to a certain extent I seem to agree with the general consensus. Therefore those living in this island city state will have to make do with what we have got and play around with different focal lengths to get the effect we want. Shown here is a rather interesting and also expressive snapshot taken in an outdoor natural setting! Taken at F2.8 aperture, the gem of the lens exhibited great flare control and allowed me to use a fast shuttle speed to freeze the subject in motion, in this backlit green patch of the beach. Moderately wide, the 35mm F2 would make a nice environmental portrait lens. The D700 Auto White Balance worked surprisingly fine in this case, though I have to say not always in cases like very warm evening sunshine or in shaded forrested areas. It would help a lot, but no reflectors were used in this shot, though the sand helps throw back some reflected light onto the subject. Its a snapshot anyway!

Just added another recent snapshot update: Too lazy to create a new post. Took this picture while strolling along Arab Street on Labour Day. Hat's off to the 35mm F2! Cheers!

Sugar and Spice

It may come as a surprise that I do not have any real walk around lens except the cheapo Sigma 18-50mm F3.5-5.6 lens that is a bit short of range for most event shoots in my opinion. I usually borrow the Nikon 18-70mm F3.5-4.5 kit lens from a fellow colleague to cover such photography when the need arise. After a couple of event photography that I got requested to do, and to stop inconveniencing my rather generous colleague further, I bit the bullet and decided to splurge on a Nikon 16-85mm F3.5-5.6 AFS VR lens! That is, not after sacrificing my Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 by selling it away to fund that purchase. The Tamron was a wonderful lens to have, but I decided to trade it off for the flexibility of the Nikon, since I have enough Prime Lens to cover my mostly portraiture shots taken with that lens. Stay tuned for my amatuer test run with the Nikon 16-85mm lens in awhile. In the meantime, enjoy some of my recent shots taken a few hours ago with my evergreen Nikon 35mm F2 and 85mm F1.8 lens! Kudos to these fine young ladies who remind me of the term Sugar and Spice. They carried on with the shoot inspite of a creepy stalker spying on us from both near and afar! That creep actually had the audacity to lie himself flat and belly down on the ground while spying on us from behind a nearby wall! I did not know whether to kick that creepy stalker or laugh out loud at his absurd behaviour! The strange things that people do. When they see Sugar and Spice. And all things Nice. Haha!

Spiral Stairway

Here, to complete the series and for your viewing pleasure, are some of the earlier shots taken with the Nikon 35mm F2 this time.

Nikon 35mm F2 Natural Light Portraits

I have always had a softspot for the 50mm focal length, since the lens that started me off in photography was a 50mm lens on a mechanical camera for 35mm film. Since most afforadable DSLR have crop factors of 1.5x like my D200, the closest I can get in angle of view would be the Nikon 35mm F2, although it would result in a slightly different perspective. I did a photoshoot with both the Nikon 35mm F2 and the Nikon 50mm F1.4 and I am glad to say that this lens is a solid performer too. It does not have to feel embarassed in the company of its more well known brother. Included in the Nikon 35mm F2 shots are the usual window front and side lightings, and the slightly more difficult backlit shots. Some of the backlit shots exhibit slightly greenish flare, but not that much to distract from the main subject. Its flare resistant and contrast is quite exceptional considering I was shooting backlit subjects at aperture F2.8 straight into the light, without a lens hood. Here are some sample pictures from today's shoot. Believe it or not, all these were shot at a stairway! Cheers!

Studio Photoshoot With Nikon 35mm F2 AFD

My friends and I did a photoshoot in a relatively cramped studio around the boat quay area last month. Being newbies at studio photography setups and with time contraints a factor, we made do with a few simple ones through trial and error. All of us have a full time job, so finding a schedule which fits all of us was not easy. Used in these samples are images taken with the Nikon 35mm F2 AFD, a nice little compact prime lens which provided me with tack sharp and relatively undistorted half and full length portraits. Most of the aperture settings were set between F8 to F11 for the lens performance sweet spot. Bokeh in this case is not very important as the backdrop is plain and undistracting. My Nikon D200 performed well under Auto White Balance setting throughout. My ex-colleague was kind enough to model for us for this shoot. She did a great job on her makeup and poses, even though she may not be a professional model or have any makeup artist with her! As you all may know, I mostly do natural light photography, and I am very inexperienced at studio photography due to the numerous planning required, (such as theme, makeup/hair artist and studio bookings for the photoshoot), and the prohibitive costs involved. I thought I would like to share a long delayed picture from the rare studio photoshoot I did anyway. Cheers!

The Gunnery

Yesterday morning, I met up with 2 bubbly and fun loving gals for the first time to have a TFCD(Time For CD) session with them. They basically have not done a photoshoot before and wanted to try one out for the experience. To those who may not know what TFCD means, it works whereby the model poses for the photographer, and the photographer gives the model a copy of a CD/DVD for her time. This is usually the case for models and photographers who want to built a portfolio or have more practice. We went to Chinatown(Yeah, I know, always the same place, but how big is Singapore, haha!), and we started off taking some pictures along Keong Saik Road when we were watched closely by "Curious" Ah-Peks(Old Man), eyes glazed and in a daze as usual, and a friendly elderly British man from one of the budget hotels who tried to strike a conversation with us. Anyway, we moved on a little distance away after awhile, and very unexpectedly, a Caucasion man, from one of the shophouses there invited us to take pictures at his music/pro audio/software production house, "The Gunnery". He shortly introduced himself as Ben and showed us in. What a show of commendable hospitality! We accepted his very generous offer and good will! As I was not prepared for any indoor shoot that day, I did not bring my external flash and shot mostly with my inbuilt camera flash or without flash. We shot at the cosy and stylish lounge, air-conditioned and with a great sound system to play music to set the mood. Without the proper equipment for an indoor shoot, I tried my best to take some pictures with what I had. My apologies if the pics are not up to standard. For those who are wondering more on the technical side, I used a Nikon 35mm F2 for all the pictures posted here. No external flash was available for me at that time. We all had a great time and I thanked Ben for giving us the opportunity to do so. Thats one of the reason why I love my hobby Photography so much. It gives us the opportunity to meet up with new and interesting people and personalities! Thanks to Ben, Samantha and Adelyn once again.